Life purposes: Comparing higher education students in four institutions in the Netherlands and Finland

Figures & data

Table 1. Participating higher education institutes.

	The Netherlands	Finland
Research universities (RU) Domain: Humanities, social, educational sciences UHS and EDU are ERASMUS-partners.	University of Humanistic Studies (UHS) Small independent, denominational university with 750 students A strong civic and humanistic value orientation Students graduate as humanistic chaplains, ethical experts, and teachers of citizenship education	Unit of Education, Tampere University (EDU) Small unit with 1500 students Aims to educate changemakers who are socially and culturally aware experts in education Students graduate as teachers of early childhood education, basic and secondary education, and educational experts
Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) Several domains HUAS and TAMK are strategic partners.	Hanze University of Applied Sciences (HUAS) Large institution with 28.000 students Aims to be engaged university by embracing sustainability goals Offering comprehensive education in several domains	Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) Large institution with 13.000 students The first Finnish UAS to sign the international sustainable development agreement in October 2020 Offers comprehensive education in several domains

Table 2. Background of the participants.

	The Netherlands		Finland
Country	n = 663		n = 846
	UHS	HUAS	EDU	TAMK	In total
Institution*	n = 231	n = 432	n = 563	n = 283	N = 1509
Gender
Female	183 (79%)	241 (56%)	494 (87%)	187 (66%)	1105 (73%)
Male	44 (19%)	189 (44%)	65 (11.5%)	93 (33%)	391 (24%)
Other	4 (2%)	2 (0.5%)	4 (1%)	3 81%)	13 (1%)
Domain
Humanities, Social and Educational sciences	231 (100%)	53 (12%)	563 (100%)	7 (3%)	831 (55%)
Economics		179 (41%)		100 (35%)	279 (18.5%)
Technology		118 (27%)		87 (31%)	215 (14%)
Health		61 (14%)		87 (31%)	161 (11%)
Creative arts**		20 (5%)		2 (1%)	22 (1.5%)
Age	M = 25.17 (SD = 7.86)	M = 21.47 (SD = 3.17)	M = 26.58 (SD = 7.28)	M = 25.19 (SD = 7.24)	M = 24.64 (SD = 6.80)
	min 17, max 62	min 14, max 52	min 19, max 58	min 18, max 56	min 14, max 62

*Open university students or visiting students were removed from the data

**Creative arts students were included into social sciences students.

Table 3. Spearman’s correlations.

Dimensions of purpose	Intention	Engagement	Beyond the self
Intention	-	.603**	.111**
Engagement	.623**	-	.143**
Beyond the self	.115**	.111**	-

Dutch correlations below hypotenuse and above Finnish

Figure 1. Dutch purpose profiles.

Figure 2. Finnish purpose profiles.

Table 4. Descriptive statistics of purpose profiles.

DUTCH PURPOSE PROFILES Dimensions of purpose	Purposeful n = 246 (37%) M (SD)	Self-oriented n = 151 (23%) M (SD)	Dreamer n = 166 (25%) M (SD)	Disengaged n = 100 (15%) M (SD)	ANOVA F(df), p, ηp^2
Intention
Scale 1–7	5.51 (.71)	5.12 (.85)	3.69 (.89)	3.32 (.80)	280.655(3)***
z-score	.56 (.56)	.25 (.67)	−.88 (.70)	−1.17(.63)	.561
Engagement
Scale 1–7	5.57 (.63)	5.35 (.64)	4.18 (.75)	3.82 (.677)	251.012(3)***
z-score	.56 (.65)	.32 (.65)	−.86 (.77)	.1.22 (.69)	.533
Beyond-the-self
Scale 1–5	2.67 (.53)	2.67 (.53)	4.03 (.46)	2.52 (.55(	419.997(3)***
z-score	.44 (.58)	−1.23 (.67)	.48 (.59)	−1.42 (.69)	.657
FINNISH PURPOSE PROFILES Dimensions of purpose	Purposeful n = 243 (29%) M (SD)	Self-oriented n = 302 (36%) M (SD)	Dreamer n = 187 (22%) M (SD)	Disengaged n = 114 (13.5%) M (SD)
Intention
Scale 1–7	5.93 (.68)	5.46 (.72)	3.96 (.89)	3.05 (1.0)	480.412(3)***
z-score	.89 (.53)	.51 (.57)	−.67 (.70)	−1.37 (.78)	.631
Engagement
Scale 1–7	5.87 (.57)	5.38 (.59)	4.45 (.96)	3.86 (.77)	329.975(3)***
z-score	.87 (.59)	.37 (.61)	−.58 (.78)	−1.89 (.79)	.540
Beyond-the-self
Scale 1–5	4.48 (.42)	3.31 (.44)	4.37 (.43)	2.99 (.64)	416.638(3)***
z-score	−.83 (.81)	−.43 (.55)	.78 (.55)	−.84 (.81)	.597

*** p < .001, Pairwise comparisons were statistically significant between all profiles within each country, except in Beyond the self dimension between following profiles: Dutch Disengaged and Self-oriented, Dutch Dreamer and Purposeful, and Finnish Purposeful and Dreamer (p > .05).

Table 5. Purpose orientations in written statements.

	Dutch data		Finnish data
Orientations	n	%	n	%
Other orientation—Self and other/only other	291	44	262	31
Self-orientation—Only self	283	43	555	66
Disengaged orientation—No purpose	21	3	21	3
No answer	67	10	8	1
Total	663	100	846	100

Table A1. Dimensions, items and alpha values of three dimensions of purpose.

		Alpha values#
Dimensions and items		UHS	HUAS	Dutch	EDU	TAMK	Finnish
INTENTION (Dimension 1)		α = .841	α = .861	α = .853	α = .885	α = .892	α = .890
MLQ1	1. I understand my life’s meaning.
MLQ4	4. My life has a clear sense of purpose.
MLQ5	5. I have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful.
MLQ6	6. I have discovered a satisfying life purpose.
MLQ9r	9. My life has no clear purpose.
ENGAGEMENT (Dimension 2)		α = .666	α = .735	α = .710	α = .735	α = .746	α = .738
PIL3	3. I am an active person in carrying out the plans I set for myself
PIL5r	5. My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me.
PIL6	6. I enjoy making plans for the future and working to make them a reality
PIL8	8. Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them.
PIL9r	9. I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time
BEYOND THE SELF (Dimension 3)		α = .800	α = .845	α = .854	α = .817	α = .823	α = .826
CPS9	9. How often do you hope to leave the world better than you found it?
CPS10	10. How often do you find yourself hoping that you will make a meaningful contribution to the broader world?
CPS12	12. How often do you hope that the work that you do positively influences others?
CPS11	11. How important is it for you to make the world a better place in some way?

Table A2. Goodness-of-fit values of confirmatory factor analyses on instruments measuring three dimensions of purpose (intention, engagement, beyond the self).

	UHS (n = 231)	HUAS (n = 342)	Dutch (n = 663)	EDU (n = 563)	TAMK (n = 283)	Finnish (n = 845)
Absolute fit measures
χ^2 of model fit	12.550	162.612	217.836	236.832	120.424	273.438
Df	74	74	74	74	74	74
p	.0005	.000	.000	.000	.0005	.000
RMSEA	.052	.053	.054	.063	.047	.056
90% C.I.	.035 .069	.042 .064	.046 .063	.054 .072	.031 .062	.059 .064
SRMR	.055	.052	.046	.055	.060	.056
Incremental fit measures
CFI	.950	.954	.952	.935	.965	.949
TLI	.938	.944	.940	.920	.957	.937

Abbreviations:

n = Number of participants. r = Scale reversed.

# Alpha-values were calculated for five MLQ, five PIL and four CPS-items.

MLQ measuring Intention (Dimension 1): Five Presence of purpose items from Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ) (Steger et al., 2006). Scale 1–7 (1 = absolutely untrue, 7 = absolutely true).

PIL measuring Engagement (Dimension 2): Five items from Purpose in Life (PIL; Ryff, 1989). Scale 1–7 (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree).

CPS measuring Beyond the self (Dimension 3): Four beyond-the-self -items from Claremont Purpose Scale (CPS; Bronk et al., 2018). Scale 1–5 (1 = almost never/not at all important, 5 = almost all the time/extremely important).

RMSEA = Root Mean Square Error of Approximation with 90% confidence interval. SRMR = Standardized Root Mean Square Residual. TLI = Tucker-Lewis Coefficient. CFI = Comparative Fit Index.

UHS = University of Humanistic Studies. HUAS = Hanze University of Applied Sciences. EDU = Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. TAMK = Tampere University of Applied Sciences.

Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.1.80

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